Two sets of furnaces
where bodies were burned. The device at the oven mouth is mounted on rails and
used to push the bodies into the flames. Scroll to the right and look through
the door to the gas chamber (see Auschwitz # 16). After gassing, prisoners workers
called Sonderkommando (special workers), men who were forced on pain of death
to do this work, carried or dragged the bodies to the rail carts that were used
to push the bodies into the ovens. Scrolling around you see some of the devices
used for another oven no longer there. This was an early version of the industrial
mass production methods used for murdering countless souls. As you will see
in the Birkenau exhibition (see Birkenau Map), the Nazis were to greatly improve
the size and efficiency of their mass destruction methods.